Monday, Nov 11, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

Today is Veterans Day. We’re covering the resignation of Bolivia’s president, the shooting of a protester in Hong Kong and a forecast of unseasonably cold weather in the U.S.

By Chris Stanford

Celebrating the resignation of President Evo Morales in La Paz, Bolivia, on Sunday. Martin Alipaz/EPA, via Shutterstock

A power vacuum in Bolivia

Lawmakers are hoping to sort out the country’s political future today, after the resignation of President Evo Morales following weeks of widespread protests. Vice President Álvaro García Linera and several other officials in the line of succession also resigned on Sunday.

After a disputed election last month, the police and the armed forces eventually broke with the president and sided with protesters in demanding his resignation. Mr. Morales has insisted he is the victim of a coup.

Background: Mr. Morales, who came to power in 2006, stayed in the presidency longer than any other current head of state in Latin America. After leading Bolivia through an era of economic growth and shrinking inequality, he had pushed to change the law to run for a fourth term.

What’s next: An opposition lawmaker, Jeanine Añez, said that she would assume the interim presidency. But she would need a congressional quorum to approve a transfer of power, and Mr. Morales’s party, the Movement for Socialism, controls both houses of Congress.

Tech’s failure to rein in child abuse images

Photographs and videos of child sexual abuse that were circulated across the internet haunt victims into adulthood as criminals exploit search engines, social networks and cloud storage. (A warning: The linked article contains graphic descriptions of abuse.)

A record 45 million images were flagged last year.

A Times investigation found that tech companies consistently failed to take coordinated steps to shut down the illegal content. We spoke to survivors of child sexual abuse whose anguish has been preserved on the internet, seemingly forever.

Among our findings:

■ Apple does not scan its cloud storage, and it encrypts its messaging app, making detection virtually impossible.

■ Amazon does not look for the images in its cloud service.

■ Dropbox, Google and Microsoft’s consumer products scan for illegal images only when someone shares them, not when they are uploaded.

■ Facebook scans its platforms, but it has announced plans to encrypt its messenger service, which will make it harder to detect illegal images.

■ Live streams represent a major challenge. No major tech company is able to detect, much less stop, illegal live streaming.

As vice president, Joe Biden met in 2015 with Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's president at the time. Pool photo by Mikhail Palinchak

What Joe Biden did in Ukraine

As the House holds public hearings in the impeachment investigation this week, Republicans are hoping to redirect the spotlight onto Mr. Biden and his son Hunter.

As vice president, Mr. Biden tried to press Ukraine’s leaders to clean up the country’s rampant corruption and overhaul its energy industry. Our reporters tell the story of that effort, which has been overtaken by a subplot involving Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian gas company.

The Daily: Today’s episode is about the importance of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

Another angle: Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, says in a new memoir that she resisted efforts by other top aides to President Trump to undermine his policies.

Related: Elizabeth Warren’s tax proposals would significantly curb the fortunes of the country’s richest families. If her wealth tax had been in effect since 1982, for example, Bill Gates would have had $13.9 billion in 2018, instead of $97 billion.

Go deeper: Michael Bloomberg is the latest former mayor of New York City to explore a presidential bid, though he has advantages that his predecessors didn’t.

If you have 18 minutes, this is worth it

How Russia meddles for profit

Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Last year, Moscow worked to sway elections in Madagascar, an island nation off Africa’s southeastern coast. The Times found that the operation was approved by President Vladimir Putin and was coordinated by some of the same figures who oversaw the disinformation campaign aimed at the 2016 U.S. election.

But rather than trying to upend Western democracy and rattle Mr. Putin’s geopolitical rivals, the undertaking in Madagascar seemed to have a simpler objective: profit.

Here’s what else is happening

Hong Kong shooting: An antigovernment demonstrator was in critical condition today after being shot by a police officer. The shooting occurred as protesters blocked roads and disrupted the city’s transit system.

Unseasonal cold: Temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees below normal across much of the U.S. early this week, the National Weather Service said.

Deadlock in Spain: The Socialist Party won the most seats in parliamentary elections but still needs partners to form a government, exactly where it was after a vote in April. Vox, an ultranationalist party, doubled its strength.

Solving a World War II mystery: The U.S.S. Grayback, a submarine sunk by Japan in 1944, has been found. The breakthrough came after a mistranslated Japanese war record had pointed previous searches in the wrong direction.

The Weekly: The latest episode of The Times’s TV show is about the hands-on teaching practices of yoga and accusations of inappropriate touching. Read behind-the-scenes notes about the episode, which is available on FX and Hulu.

Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Since 2005, an organization has arranged to transport nearly a quarter-million veterans to the capital free of charge to see the monuments celebrating them.

A heavenly meander: The planet Mercury will appear as a black dot as it crosses in front of the sun today, starting at about 7:30 a.m. Eastern. The full transit will take about five and a half hours.

N.F.L. results: Sunday’s games included surprising losses for the Chiefs and for the Saints. Here’s what we learned in Week 10.

Major League Soccer title: The Seattle Sounders beat Toronto F.C., 3-1, to win their second championship.

Metropolitan Diary: In this week’s column, searching for a parking space in the Bronx, spotting a snail upstate and more reader tales of New York City.

What we’re reading: This essay in The Atlantic by Leslie Jamison on the photographer Garry Winogrand, “a devoted chronicler of public spaces.” Dan Saltzstein, our senior editor for special projects, calls it “beautiful — and surprisingly personal.”

Now, a break from the news

Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui.

Cook: Think of this supremely comforting, cheesy recipe as pizza in rice form.

Watch: For her first feature film, the director Melina Matsoukas, who is known for viral music videos, was haunted by the footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest.

Go: “Akhnaten,” a work by the composer Philip Glass, is a “spellbinding 1984 meditation on the tumultuous rule of the Egyptian pharaoh,” our critic writes. It’s at the Metropolitan Opera, where we went behind the scenes of the production.

Smarter living: New experiences can be great. But don’t dismiss repetition — there’s usually room for novel discoveries.

And now for the Back Story on …

Umbrella rules

A rule change means that male U.S. Marines, who previously had to stand in the rain, can now carry umbrellas while wearing their service or dress uniforms.

(Women have long been afforded a black umbrella — but only in their left hand, to keep their right free for salutes.)

U.S. Marines performed in the rain on July 4 in Washington. Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Governments have complicated relationships with umbrellas. Safety concerns have prompted umbrella bans, sometimes for reasons seemingly straight out of spy films though actually based in reality. An umbrella gun was apparently used in 1978 to stab a Bulgarian dissident in London with a fatal dose of ricin.

In 2014, umbrellas were banned in Macau during a rainy visit by President Xi Jinping of China. Airport authorities cited wind, but the Umbrella Movement then unfolding in Hong Kong was probably a bigger consideration.

During World War II, Major Digby Tatham-Warter of Britain famously carried an umbrella into battle. Once, he used it to attack an armored vehicle and incapacitate the driver.

When a lieutenant later questioned the umbrella’s usefulness in war, the major asked, “Oh my goodness Pat, what if it rains?”

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Chris

Thank you
Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. Will Dudding, an assistant in the standards department, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is about American military aid to Ukraine.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Friend, to an Australian (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Adweek named David Rubin, the chief marketing officer of The Times, a Brand Genius for increasing public awareness of our news organization and helping us increase our paid subscriptions to nearly five million.